The philosopher John Rawls suggested that the only ethical society is one which we design before we know what position we will hold in it. If you don’t know whether you’ll be born the child of janitor or a billionaire, black or white, you may view social justice differently than when you know that your [...]

Today, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky are celebrating their wedding in Rhinebeck, NY, just up the road apiece from where my eldest daughter got her culinary arts degree from the CIA. Anyone who has ever visited the Hudson Valley can attest to its natural beauty and wonderful cuisine.

Anyway, I’d like to wish Chelsea and Marc good wishes, and anyone else who is getting married on this absolutely beautiful day in the Northeast. Chelsea and Marc have been childhood friends and both have survived a sort of trial by fire. We’ve all heard the familiar passages read at wedding. First Corinthians 13 and all that. But I’d like to invite Conflucians to find other inspiring passages for weddings. I’ll start.

Here is my selection from Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Many of Hardy’s marriages were complicated, to say the least. But the one between Gabriel Oak and Bathsheeba Everdeen stands out for me because it is based on friendship and respect even though both partners have shortcomings. Here is my passage:

He accompanied her up the hill, explaining to her the details of his forthcoming tenure of the other farm. They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably unnecessary between such tried friends. Theirs was that substantial affection which arises (if any arises at all) when the two who are thrown together begin first by knowing the rougher sides of each other’s character, and not the best till further on, the romance growing up in the interstices of a mass of hard prosaic reality. This good-fellowship — camaraderie — usually occurring through similarity of pursuits, is unfortunately seldom superadded to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours, but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstance permits its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death — that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam.

May Chelsea be as fortunate as her parents to find such camaraderie. Congratulations and Mazel Tov to Chelsea and Marc.

Kiki posted this video of Chelsea answering questions at Duke University in the Open Thread last night. She’s actually answering just one question — about Hillary’s feminism. The range of Chelsea’s answer to this question is amazing (and she’s speaking without notes or pause). Take a look for yourself — but I can see why the anti-Clintonites are in a panic. We’re going to be hearing from Chelsea again:

[UPDATE]

Commenter Dee was actually at this forum and she’s shared her experience with us (See Inside):

Hola, mi amigos. I’m going on vacation tomorrow to Denver for a week to do that whole Rocky Mountain thing. So, I have a lot to do today to get ready and posting will be light. (HA! I always tell myself this) BTW, if anyone from Clinton’s campaign is reading this and needs a blogger in Denver for the Convention, I have a place to stay for free or vastly reduced cost *hint, hint*.

Update Action Alert: If you think that the DNC is out of it’s mind by not seating the FL and MI delegations and you find this unacceptable for the DEMOCRATIC party to not be practicing DEMOCRACY, then I have a petition for you. ;-) Sign on the line at Seat our Delegates. (Note the “you can’t count on us to vote in November” statement. They aren’t ruling it out. They’re just saying, “Nice chance of winning back the WH in November you got there. You wouldn’t want anything to *happen* to it, eh”)

Anyways, the trolls are thicker than a perilous Hobbitt episode but many of them are incredibly dim. Fortunately, our friends at Corrente have been schooling them so at least they know what the heck they’re talking about. For example:

Vastleft jumps to the advanced material with Sneaky Chelsea Dodges Questions about, well, you know. Unfortunately, some trolls came to the class on wits unarmed. So, Lambert taught the prerequisite course in irony and The Clenis. It pains me to have to bring this subject up because Chelsea is right, it’s none of our business. But the Beevis and Butthead crowd in the 90’s Washington Press Corps started it and are now passing it down to a new generation and they really need to get their facts straight. Like, as Democrats, they should be ashamed to bring up this sordid episode in the life of the American media. If any one came out of it looking bad, it was them.
As for Chelsea, we should al be so lucky and as Jackie-O once said, “If you mess up your children, nothing else you do really matters” Kudos to Hillary for doing a remarkable job under duress.

Tukana schools us on Iraq, the Candidates and the Netroots. Getting out of Iraq is not going to be easy and the candidate that has set unrealistic expectations is going to be in a heap of trouble if he/she can’t deliver after the election but this is going to fall on Barry’s head harder. Many of his younger supporters are virulently anti-war, (aren’t we all?) but don’t realize that things aren’t going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time. Ahh, the impatience of youth. And this is what they are in large part basing their voting decision on. In the meantime, mortars strike inside the Green Zone.

BTW, did you tune your tinfoil antenna today to pick up Clinton’s latest directive? Lambert finds yet another fault in Josh Marshall’s reasoning, or, rather, the people that Josh Marshall allows to lower the level of discourse at his site. Look guys, it’s really simple. We *like* Clinton. She’s not perfect but she’s supersmart, committed, tough as nails and she’s the real Democrat in this race. We don’t like Obama because he’s has no record to speak of, his campaign is determined to disenfranchise the votes of Floridians and Wolverines and, finally, he has shown a remarkable amount of contempt for the Democratic base of women and “typical white” people. There’s really no mystery about it. In fact, the only ones who seem to be mindlessly following control signals appear to be Obamaphiles. Their support for their candidate makes no damn sense except in terms of him not being Clinton. That’s the sum total of support for him: he is the anti-Clinton. Anyway, the superdelegates are reportedly holding back and assessing the situation to see if Obama “might prove to be a stronger draw”. Uh, no. The answer would be no. Come on, guys, I have talked to people on the phone who several years ago would have never considered voting for Clinton but they are *eager* to do it this year and it has nothing to do with messing up the Democrats. It’s because they’ve seen enough of her lately to know what mettle she’s made of and they like her. Jeez. Keep those emails flowing. The SDs don’t get it yet.

Oh, brother, here we go again. The NYTimes reports that all of the innovation in passing around news virally is happening because young people are doing it. Yep, it’s only the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Models with PhDs for Obama who do that stuff. That would make us….what, exactly? Jeez, I was using chats, writing html and embedding before these kids were out of diapers. Heck, I remember when Mosaic was the coolest thing since sliced bread. And before *that* we ftp’d each other and thought we were hot spit because we could finger the vending machine at CMU. WE blazed the trail. Gits.

Campaigning at Butler College in Indianapolis, an audience member asked the 28 year-old whether the Monica Lewinsky scandal had damaged her mother’s reputation.

“Wow, you’re the first person actually that’s ever asked me that question in the, I don’t know maybe, 70 college campuses I’ve now been to, and I do not think that is any of your business,” Clinton responded, appearing a bit surprised by the question. The crowd immediately cheered loudly at the response.

Amazing! What a perfect response. I couldn’t have said it better myself. You tell’em, Chelsea!

I’ve watched Keith Olberman faithfully for a couple of years now and I used to think that David Shuster was a pretty good reporter. But the Obamagasm and testosterone poisoning on DailyKos and other of the Big Blog Stores has infiltrated Countdown and MSNBC in general and made them a less credible source of news for me.

It’s very annoying. First it was the major network news programs that couldn’t be trusted, Fox never was, CNN started copying Fox to remain competitive and we progressives had nowhere else to turn. Then MSNBC started to take up the cause for us and Countdown delivered brilliant commentary channeling our frustration and anger.

They are channeling something else now. The skewed coverage of the primary elections is apalling and very disappointing. In an effort to increase the bottom line, they have latched onto the Obamania inspired circlejerk of the Big Blogs. It doesn’t seem to bother them that the voters of the big Democratic states are voting for Clinton by wide margins.

I blame Jack Welch. The bottom line is everything to him. Countdown wouldn’t even exist anymore if a lot of us didn’t schedule him on our DVR’s and if the satellite companies didn’t collect data that GE uses to woo advertisers. So, buh-bye, Keith. I’d rather stick to C-Span or CNN than listen to another jerk call Hillary, “Babe” or accuse her of pimping her daughter. The frat boy crap has got to stop.

Better yet, I’m going to reset my DVR for Bill O’Reilly. Yeah! That’s the ticket! I don’t have to watch him, or at least I don’t have to be in the same room when I play the DVR back. Oo! Oo! I have TWO DVRs! I can program the other one to do the same thing! Oo! Oo! I actually have a dual DVR on my one TV in the living room and the other half of it is awaiting my new TV for the basement. Now is the perfect time to buy that third TV and set the DVR to pick up Billo on it.

3 DVR’s all recording BillO every frickin’ night for the foreseeable future. Boosting his ratings. Increasing his ad revenue. It will go straight to his massive head.

I want to hear KO and Shuster to cry uncle and make a sincere effort to get the rest of us back. Ooops! There will be no way I can tell they are contrite BECAUSE I WON’T BE WATCHING!

You want to know the worst part of the MSNBC turn to MAXIM Media on steroids? The worst part is that my 12 year old daughter was a faithful Countdown viewer. But if you think I’m going to let her self-image be tainted by this overt appeal to males at her expense, you are sadly mistaken.

I don’t know what the rest of you readers are going to do but someone’s got to draw the line. I’ll go first.

Update: It looks like David Shuster will be suspended. Why not suspend Tweety too while you’re at it? And have a written notice placed in Russert’s permanent record. It’s too late, guys. You’ve probably lost your female viewership at this point, that is, the portion not slavishly worshipping Obama.

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Readers, I’m sorry I missed Water Cooler Monday. Perhaps it would be simplest to say I was trapped in a chrono-synclastic infundibulum. TPP Lori Wallach on the leaked investment chapter [Eyes on Trade (PDF)]. The tribunals would be empowered to order payment of unlimited government funds to foreign investors over […] […]

Body: This paper, or pre-draft, or sketch, or whatever it is, started out with this title: "With The 12-Point Platform, this won't happen: An aristocracy of credentialism in the 20%." But then I realized I'd gotten in deeper than I thought -- one of those posts were the framework and the notes overwhelm the original idea -- and as it tur […]